Design POV has always been about what it feels like to be inside a space - the atmosphere, materials underfoot, sounds, and memories a room can trigger without warning. It was this immersive and sensory understanding of design that brought The Macallan to Design POV ’26 as the official Experience Partner for an exclusive tasting experience.

Since 1824, The Macallan has been making single malt Scotch whisky in Scotland with a patience and precision that most industries have long abandoned. Their expressions open slowly, through aroma, texture, colour, taste, and finally the kind of memory that surfaces later, when you are somewhere else entirely.

On the evening of 15 May, the tasting took place against The Circle, which was created as an installation named Shared Frequencies, conceived by Doyel Joshi and Neil Ghose Balser of How Are You Feeling Studio, in collaboration with Saurabh Suryan of Fourthreefive. The thinking behind it was to have a room where there is no division between who is speaking and who is listening. Everyone in the space was a participant.

The details made that idea physical. The seating was proportioned to mirror The Macallan's iconic box packaging, and each layer corresponded to a stage in the tasting journey guests were about to move through. Across the floor, projections of The Macallan's signature print, drawn from the striking silhouette of the distillery's roof, brought the brand's visual identity directly into the room. Through the day, the space held dialogue openly. As the evening arrived, it contracted into something more intimate, more considered.

It was, to use the language Design POV '26 was built around, a space you felt before you understood it.